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Meyer Schapiro (190+1996) 'The Social Bases of Art'

Schapiro was of the few art historians writing in the English language in the 1930s who applied the resources of the Marxist jntellectual tradition to the problems of analysis of modern art and its development. In this paper he brings a social,hislorical form of explan_ ation to bear on the current conditi0ns of artistic practice. 0riginally delivered as a contribution t0 the First American Artists' Congress in New york in 1936, and fjrst publlshed in the proceedings of the Congress. Reprinted in D. Shapiro led.J, Social Realism _ Art as a

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Weapon: Crittcal Studies in American

lvlodernism as

Critique 515
wh ch the

Art, New York, 1973, from pp. 120-7 of

oresent version is taken,

. ..] If modern art seems to have no social necessity, it is because the social has becn narrowly identified with the collective as the anti-individual, and llith replessire institutions and beliefs, like the church or thc state or morality, to which most individuals submit. But even those actilities in which the individual seems to be unconstrained and purely cgoistic dcpcnd upon socially organized relationships. Pri\ate propert], indi]ridual competitive busincss entcrprisc or sexual freedom, far from

[.

constituting non-social relationships, presuppose specihc, historically developed forms of society-. Nearer to art there arc many unregistered practices which seem to involve no r.rfficial institutions, I'et depend on recently acquired social interests and on definite jtiges of matcrial dcvelopment. A promenade, for example (as distinguished from a :cligious procession or a parade), would be impossible rvithout a particular growth of urban life and secular fbrms of recreation. The nccessary means the streets and the roads - are also social and economic in origin, beyond or prior to anf individual; 1'et cich man enjol's his walk bl himself rvithout any sense of constraint or institutional
purpose.

In thc samc way, thc apparent isolation of the modern artist from practical activities, rhc discrepancy between his archaic, individual handicraft and the collective, mechan:crl character of most modern production, do not necessarily mean that he is outside .ocicty or that his work is unaffected b"v social and economic changes. The social aspect rt his art has been further obscured by two things, the insistently personal character of :he modern painter's lr.ork and his preoccupation rvith formal problems alone. The first ,c.rds him to think of himself in opposition to societ)' as an organized repressive poli'cr, lrstile to individual freedom; the second seems to confirm this in stripping his rvork of .rnl purpose other than a purely 'aesthetic'. But ifrve eramine attentively the obiects a modern artist paints and the psychological .lrtitudes evident in the choice of these objects and their forms, we till see hor nrimatell his art is tied to the life of modcrn society. -\lthough painters will say again and again that content docsn't matter, they are ,uriously selective in their subjects. They paint onll certain themes and onll in a -crtain aspect. The content of the great body of art todal', rvhich appears to be .,nconcefned with content, may be described as follorvs. First, there are natural .pcctacles, landscapes or city-scenes, regarded from the viervpoint of a relaxed specta,r, a vacationist or sportsman, who values the landscape chiefll' as a source ofagreeable .cnsirtions or mood; artificial spectacles and entertainments the theatre, the circus, re horse-race, the athletic lteld, the music-hall - or cvcn torks of painting, sculpture, ::chitccture and technologl', experienced as spectacles or objects of art; the artist rrmself and individuals associated rvith him; his studio and his intimate obiects, his :r,rdel posing, the fruit and florvers on his tablc, his window and the vierv from it; .., rrbols of the artist's activity, individuals practising other arts, rehearsing, or in their :.rir ac,1-; instruments of art, especialll'of music, which suggest an abstract art and :nprovisation; isolated intimate ficlds, likc a table covered with private instruments of .llc sensation, drinking glasses, a pipe, playing cards, books, all objects of manipula:,)n. referring to an exclusive, private world in which the individual is immobile, but

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free to enjoy his own moods and self stimulation. And finally, there are pictures ,which the elements of professional artistic discrimination, present to some degree in j. painting the lines, spots of color, areas, texturesr modelling are disengaged fr,,: things and juxtaposed as 'pure' aesthetic objects. Thus elements drawn from the professional surroundings and activity of the arti': situations in which we are consumers and spectatorsl objects which we conftor:' intimately, but passively or accidentally, or manipulate idly and in isolation thc'. are typical subjects of modem painting. They recur with surprising regularin r: contemporafy art. Modern artists have not only eliminated the world of action from their pictures, buthey have interpreted past art as if the elements of experience in it, the represent.t objects, were incidental things, pretexts of design or imposed subjects, in spite ,' which, or in opposition to which, the artist realized his supposedly pure aestheti. impulse. They are therfore unaware of their own objects or regard them as mercl, incidental pretexts for form. But a little observation will shorv that each school (': modern artists has its characteristic objects and that these derive from a conter' ofexperience which also operates in their formal fantasy. The picture is not a renderin' of external objects that is not even strictll' true of realistic art but the objcct' assembled in the picture come from an experience and interests which affect the form.: character. An abstract art built up out ofother objects, that is, out ofother interests anc experience, would have another formal character.

A modern work, considered formally, is no more artistic than an older work. Th. preponderance of objects drawn from a personal and artistic world does not mean thrt pictures are now more pure than in the past, more completely works of art. It mean. simply that the personal and aesthetic contexts ofsecular life nolr.condition the formll character ofart, just as religious beliefs and practices in the past conditioned the formrl character of religio$ art. The conception of art as purely aesthetic and individual can exist only where culture has been detached from practical and collective interests and ir supported by individuals alone. But the mode of life ofthese individuals, their place in society, determine in many ways this individual art. In its most advanced form, this conception ofart is typical of the rentier leisure class in modern capitalist society, and i\ most intensely developed in centers, like Paris, which have a large rentier group and considerable luxury industries. Here the individual is no longer engaged in a struggle to attain wealth; he has no direct relation to work, machinery, competition; he is simpll a consumer, not a producer. He belongs to a class which recognizes no higher group or authority. The older stable forms of family life and sexual morality have been destroyed; there is no royal court or church to impose a regulating pattern on his activit). For this individual the world is a spectacle, a source of novel pleasant sensations, or a field in which he may realize his 'individuality,' through art, through sexual intrigue and the most varied, but non-productive, mobility [. . .] l. , .] It is the situation ofpainting in such a society, and the resulting condition ofthe artist, which confer on the artist to-day certain common tendencies and attitudes. Even the artist of lower middle-class or working-class origin coms to create pictures congenial to the members of this upper class, without having to identify himself directly with it. He builds, to begin with, on the art of the last generation and is influenced by the success ofrecent painters. The general purpose of art being aesthetic,

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Modernism as

Critique 517

he is already predisposed to interests and attitudes, imaginatively related to those ofthe leisure class, which values its pleasures as aesthetically refined, individual pursuits. He competes in an open market and therefore is conscious of the noveltv or uniqueness of his work as a value. He creates out ofhis own head (having no subject-matter imposed

by a commission), rvorks entirely by himself, and is therefore concerned with his

po\irers of fantasl', his touch, his improvised forms. His sketches are sometimes more

successful than his finished pictures, and the latter often acquire the qualities
sketch.

of

Cut off from the middle class at the ve4'- beginning of his career by povertl' and insecurity and by the non-practical character of his work, the artist often repudiates its moral standards and responsibilities. He forms on the margin of this inferior philistine world a free community of artists in which art, personalities and pleasure are the obsessing interests. The individual and the aesthetic are idealized as things completely justified in themselves and worth the highest sacrifices. The practical is despised except insofar as it produces attractive mechanical spectacles and new means ofenjoyment, or insofar as it is referred abstractly to a process of inventive design, analogous to the painter's art. His frequentlv asserted antagonism to organized society does not bring him into conflict with his patrons, since they share his contempt for the 'public' and are indifferent to practical social life. Besides, since he attributes his difficulties, not ro particular historical conditions, but to society and human nature as such, he has only a lague idea that things might be different than they are; his antagonism suggests to him no effective action, and he shuns the common slogans of reform or reyolution as
possible halters on his personal freedom. Yet helpless as he is to act on the world, he shows in his art an astonishing ingenuity and jof in transforming the shapes of familiar things. This plastic freedom should not

be considered in itself an evidence of the artist's positive will to change society or a reflection of real transforming movements in the every-day world. For it is essential in this anti-naturalistic art that just those relations of visual experience which are most important for action are destroyed b1' the modern artist. As in the fantasy of a passive jpectator, colors and shapes are disengaged from objects and can no longer serve as a means in knowing them. The space rvithin pictures becomes intraversable; its planes .rre shuffled and disarrayed, and the whole is re-ordered in a fantasticallv intricate manner. Where the human hgure is preserved, it is a piece of picturesque still-life, a richly pigmented, lumpy mass, individual, irritable and sensitivel or an accidental plastic thing among others, subject to sunlight and the drastic distortions of a design. Il-the modern artist values the body, it is no longer in the Renaissance sense of a firm, .learlv xrticulated, energetic structure, but as temperamental and vehement flesh. The passivity of the modern artist with regard to the human world is evident in a peculiar relation ofhis form and content. In his effort to create a thoroughly animated, .ct rigorous whole, he considers the interaction of color upon color, line upon line, :liss upon mass. Such pervasive interaction is for most modern painters the very .\scnc of artistic reality. Yet in his choice of subjects he rarely, if ever, seizes upon "orresponding aspects in social life. He has no interest in, no awareness of, such rnteraction in the every-day world. On the contrary, he has a special fondness for :hose objects which exist side by side without affecting each other, and fol situations in ,r hich the movements involve no real interactions. The led ofan apple may oppose the :rccn of another apple, but the apples do not oppose each other. The typical human

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situations are those in which figures look at each other or at a landscape or are piungct: in a revery or simulate some kind of absorption. And rvhere numerous complicatcc

things are brought together in apparent meaningful connection, this connection r'
cr1'ptic, bizarre, something we must solve as a conceit of the artist's mind. The social origins of such forms of modern art do not in themselves permit one t, judge this art as good or bad; they simply throw light upon some aspects of thcir character and enable us to see more clearly that the ideas of modern artists, far fionr describing eternal and necessary conditions of art, are simpll- the results of recent historv. In recognizing the dependence ofhis situation and attitudes on the character o: modern society, the artist acquires the courage to change things) to act on his socict, and for himself in an effective manner. I{e acquires at the same time new artistic conceptions. Artists who are conceln!(j with the world around them in its action and conflict, who ask the same questions thll are asked by the impoverished masses and oppressed minorities - these artlsts cannol permanently devote themselves to a painting committed to the aesthetic moments | ,l life, to spectacles designed for passive, detached individuals, or to an xrt of the stuclio There are artists and wdters for whom the apparcnt anarchl' of modern culture I' an individual affair in which each person seeks his own pleasure - is historicallr progressive, since it makes possible for the first time the conception of the human individual with his own needs and goals. But it is a conception restricted to small groups who are able to achieve such freedom only because ofthe oppression and miserr of the masses. The artists who create under these conditions are insecure and oftcn wretched. Further, this freedom of a few individuals is identified largely with con-

sumption and enjoyment; it detaches man from nature, history and society, and although, in doing so, it discovers new qualities and possibilities of feeling and imagination, unknolvn to older culture, it cannot realize those possibilities ofindividual development which depend on common productive tasks, on responsibilities, on intelligence and cooperation in dealing rvith the urgent social issues of the moment The individual is identified with the private (that is, the privation of other beings anrl the world), with the passive rather than active, the fantastic rather than the intelligent Such an art cannot really be called free, because it is so exclusive and private; there art
too many things we value that it cannot embrace or even confront. An individual art in a society where human beings do not feel themselves to be most individual when ther are inert, dreaming, passive, tormented or uncontrolled, l'ould be very different from modern art. And in a society where all men can be free individuals, individuality must lose its exclusiveness and its ruthless and perverse character.